David Díaz Arias, Christine Hatzky, Werner Mackenbach et al., Peace in Latin America. Shifting Paradigms in the Studies of Culture, Society and Politics, Routledge: New York, London 2025

The present study is the synthesis of the transatlantic and interdisciplinary line of research conducted by Christine Hatzky and her colleagues from Latin America and Germany at the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS): ‘Peace Visions. Transitions between Violence and Peace in Latin America). In this book, they reflect on the epistemological challenge of the entire research project, which assumes that peace and violence are not mutually exclusive, but rather interrelated. They explored this complex interplay and the transition processes between peace and violence in societies in Latin America and the Caribbean. The result is a comprehensive study of the possibilities of peace and of very different peace processes, their causes, phenomena and the strategies for overcoming violence. The authors address in particular the transition processes, which are influenced by a whole range of factors, be they economic and political interests, structures, social mobilisations or cultural dynamics. They examine these transition processes with historical depth and analyse the interplay between institutions, systems and structures on the one hand and the organisational processes of collective and individual actors on the other.

The present volume focuses on the origins and phenomena of political, social and symbolic violence and juxtaposes them with very different Latin American peace processes in the 20th century. They also reflected in particular on the possibilities of peace and included epistemologies and aesthetics of peace in literature and film in order to extract the concept of peace from its negative opposition to violence and to elaborate the concept of an ‘affirmative peace’ that they understand as a “horizon of life”. In addition to various case studies from Latin America and the Caribbean, the volume also includes a conceptual section that reflects on the transition processes between peace and violence, as well as a section that deals with literary, cultural and artistic representations of violence and the aesthetic possibilities for imagining peace.